The Unexpected

I thought I was going to die on Friday. It was a thought that didn't enter my mind in the morning, for the morning was lovely - if you overlook the second or two when I passed a critical eye over the two thin flakes of hay in my hands and bent to grab a third, lifting carelessly and awkwardly and causing a familiar twinge in my lower back. Some people get older and wiser. I'm just aging none too gracefully.

Dying and how I might die has been something I've thought about before. I was with my father when he took his last breath, and seven years later repeated the event with my mother, and in those two experiences, as a mixture of sorrow, loss and relief filled me, I noted my place at the head of the line. Heart disease once took my ancestors, but now modern drugs and procedures keep us going long enough to finally succumb to cancer. I've wondered which is worse: a life cut short and ended abruptly, or a long, drawn-out demise. Maybe the amount of pain is the same, but in one case intense pain and death happen all at once, and in the other they're drawn out and somewhat diluted by morphine.

On Friday I got cleaned up to go to town, organized the banking, grocery list, stuff to take to the Arts Council, my camera gear and bag, and for some reason thought I should take my blood pressure. During the height of my back pain I was on a medication that pushed it up to an unacceptably high level, and my doc wanted me to take daily readings until I see her again. I did it faithfully for awhile, but then grew tired of doing it and stopped.

The blood pressure monitor gave me a strangely low reading, so I waited a few minutes and took it again. This time it showed high figures, but my pulse rate was 32! Whoa. My mother's pulse got down around there just before she died... I placed fingers to my neck and quickly realized that the monitor hadn't exactly been lying: my pulse was skipping beats left and right. At first my heart was beating three or four times and then skipping once; then it beat five and skipped one; then two and one. I thought about my options, then called Husband for a consult, but he was out taking his noon walk/run/ski. I tried his cell phone but got his voice mail.

More thinking about what to do.

I took my pulse again, and now I was skipping every second or third beat. Should I drive myself to the emergency room? I gathered my things by the door and then placed fingers on neck again: a distressingly slow blup, skip, blup, skip, blup, skip. I dialed 9-1-1.

Although my neighbors are usually quick to respond (once I had to call the rescue squad for my mother at 5 AM, and the first medic arrived two minutes later, the ambulance and five more volunteers within ten minutes of my call), this was mid-day on a Friday, and apparently most people were at work or off on their sleds. I had nearly fifteen minutes to gather my things, feel that unenthusiastic pulse, and think.

Was my heart simply coming to a stop? On this otherwise pleasant Friday in March, had I come to the end of the line? There was none of the pain I had always anticipated at check-out time, but there it was: my heart was beating at half of what it ought to be, and I was feeling light-headed. Would the rescue squad folks find me dead on the floor when they arrived?

I never cry in the throes of tragedy. The old proverb (zen, no doubt), "Time is short, so we must proceed slowly" describes me well in what others might call a panic situation. It's not that I'm especially strong or brave (I fall apart later), but I am the person you want around in a crisis because for reasons unknown to me I try to act rationally and wisely.

You could say that "I might be dying" wasn't a particularly wise or rational thought, but there it was. When your heart slowly but steadily slows down or stops working, it did seem to me that DEAD can be the result, and the fact brought tears to my eyes, tears of disappointment, sadness caused by the realization that the grandson who has such a tiny loving family might lose one who is important to him, lose her without a goodbye or an explanation or apology. There must have been fear too, but sorrow was upmost in my mind.

There was no pain, so I decided to try pushing my heart to work. I climbed the stairs several times. (Where is the squad??) I thought of writing something to Grandson but then - since I was still right-side-up and alive despite the blup-skips - put my coat on and went onto the porch to wait for the ambulance.

What came first wasn't white. Tim, apparently knowing he would be the first responder, traded his pick-up for a fire truck as he passed through the hamlet to the north. I didn't wait inside for him to come to a stop, and a minute later we were standing in the road beside the vehicle as he slipped an oxygen mask over my head. Moments after that we could hear the siren as the white squad truck approached from the south, and soon I was strapped to a gurney, loaded and on my way, answering questions, having electrical leads attached and reassuring the nurse that her attempts to insert an IV needle on bumpy roads were not hurting me. By the way, the FEAR that I suggested must have been trumped by ration and sorrow was pretty evident in my blood pressure readings...

So obviously I lived to tell the tale. Twenty-four hours in the hospital, a battery of tests guaranteed to ensure the financial well-being of the place, and I was sent home. Apparently I am in good shape, although there's slight leakage in one of my heart valves. "Sometimes these things (blup skip blup skip) happen, and then they never happen again." On Sunday it wasn't happening, at bedtime last night it was, and now all is normal again. I will see my Burlington doc on Thursday.

Here's the point. The past three days have brought to my attention the fact that we never know how much time we have - or haven't. How sad for those who suddenly have their lives cut short. Even though doc's reassured me that my situation is not life-threatening, I wrote a short "goodbye" to Grandson. I hope he won't read it for many years, but it would have been such a tragedy to leave him without a goodbye or the words, "I love you so very much. You are the best. You are smart and you are strong, and you will have a good life without me, but I wish I could always be here to watch you grow, hear your laughter and go with you on little adventures. I wanted to watch you grow up. You don't need me, but I am so sorry to have to leave and miss all those times you will make me proud. I love you. Grandma."
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...........................Climbing the hill alone
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In Harmony

It's a struggle to get Grandson into a bathroom in any of the Ottawa museums because their thrones are all watched over by The Electric Eye, the master of the great, sudden, sucking, high-decibel, child-devouring flush. Grandson is absolutely terrified of those automatic toilets.

I can get him to go with me into the Women/Femmes - when he gets desperate enough - if I use a combination of reassurance ("I've already been in there, and they really aren't that loud") and a bite of the reality sandwich ("You're dancing, you have to go, and if you don't go pretty soon, you're going to wet your pants"). Once convinced/strong-armed, we get into a stall and I shut the door. This is when it gets dicey. Imagine being contained in a 3 x 4' space with a kid who is suddenly startled and sent into terrified flight... a kid who has a running garden hose he can't let go of. Sometimes I get the monster to flush immediately (as soon as the door is locked and he can't escape and before he gets his belt unbuckled) so as to prove that the automatic flush isn't as bad as he imagines, but that tactic undermines future trust in Grandma.

Exacerbating the whole matter is the fact that the ever-diligent Electric Eye can't seem to figure out what to do when it detects the movements of two people in the stall. Like the ass-kisser that it truly is, the E.E. invariably flushes more than once, making the point that it is never lax in its duties.

Our last museum visit was to what Grandson calls "the dinosaur museum" (otherwise known as The Museum of Nature). We had a great time and managed to survive the one and only toilet encounter, then we found an Ethiopian restaurant for dinner. To his great relief, this eatery was in an old building with an old bathroom...

The meal was spicy and very good, and eaten with your fingers: small mounds of food are placed on a large crepe-like injera. You tear off a small piece of the injera and use it to pick up a "pinch" of one food or another, so no silverware is needed. Grandson enjoyed it and seemed completely oblivious to the fact that we were practically the only white folks in the place.

After dinner we began the drive home, and as we traveled along the four-lane I turned to the back seat and said, "You know, we all have fears, things we're afraid of." Grandson was quick to reply, "I'm afraid of flushing toilets and the boiler." (The boiler "lives" in our mudroom and has terrified him irrationally since he was very young). I said, "Yes, I know you are, and I wish I could take away your fears."

A beat of silent thought; then, "Well I'll talk to Jesus about that."

I answer that sure, that might be a good idea, and I sound like I mean it. His parents take him to church, and apparently he's soaking up the message. Okay, I think, I used to believe in Jesus. And Santa Claus. And the Easter Bunny. If it gives him comfort in this world, that can only be a good thing.

A minute later I start to say something and he says, "Be quiet, Grandma, Jesus is whispering in my ear." (!) I obey, wait another minute, and then ask, "So what did Jesus tell you?"

"That these fears are okay for me to have."

"Well, that's good," I say, and Husband and I suppress amazed giggles.

A day later, it was Husband who made the musical connection. We had been listening to a Lucinda Williams CD on the way to Ottawa that morning. One of her songs, Lake Charles, contains the lines:

Did an angel whisper in your ear
Hold you close
Take away your fears
In those long, last moments

There is a game Husband and I sometimes play. We'll be discussing some event or topic, and he'll say, "Okay Wizard, what's the song?" I then quote a line from the lyrics of a song that succinctly sums up the point of discussion. (I know a lot of songs). Without realizing it, I had borrowed the third line from Lucinda's chorus when I told Grandson I wished I could take away his fears. What warms this grandma's heart is that apparently he remembered the lyrics too, and his reply made use of the first two lines.

Gone to the Woods!

This week I'm off to attend a photography workshop in the southwestern Adirondacks. Got my camera gear, a notebook computer, clothes for all kinds of weather, kayak, sleeping bag, and high hopes for learning a lot!

I leave you with a very short story:

This afternoon we harvested our onions, squash and carrots with the help of 5-year-old Grandson. He especially enjoyed pulling out the carrots, always surprised and charmed by the unexpected sizes and sometimes twisted shapes. He also got a kick out of carrying any worms we found over to the compost pile (not for any reason other than he thinks worms like the compost pile). Here's a carrot that made him laugh out loud:

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"Grandma, look! This one has a penis!"
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A good, happy and healthy week to each and all of you!

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